


Good Order, Counsel and Equity

by theviolonist



Category: Wolf Hall Series - Hilary Mantel
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-13
Updated: 2014-01-13
Packaged: 2018-01-08 13:30:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,851
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1133216
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theviolonist/pseuds/theviolonist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"So you really think the king intends to marry me?"</p><p>He thought she knew. It is the only thing they're talking about, back in London; that and the death of Anne Boleyn, the fall of one queen and the rise of another, as seems to be the cyclic tragedy of Henry's reign. But now that she says it he believes her surprise; he just does not believe that it is a sign of innocence. He has said it many times, to people who accused him of persecuting the guileless: show me an innocent man, and I will reconsider my opinions, I will change my ways. Until then, let me do my job.</p><p>"Do you not think so?"</p><p>"Is it a lawyer's trick, to answer questions with questions?"</p><p>He allows himself a smile. "One you seem to be mastering exceptionally well."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Good Order, Counsel and Equity

**Author's Note:**

  * For [yunitsa](https://archiveofourown.org/users/yunitsa/gifts).



> I hope you enjoy this belated treat, [yunitsa](http://archiveofourown.org/users/yunitsa/pseuds/yunitsa)!
> 
> I'm going to go and use [petrichoral](http://archiveofourown.org/users/petrichoral/pseuds/petrichoral)'s (whose story [Wholesome, Even for the King](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1097144) is beautiful, surpasses this by miles and you should all read) words and say this is set roughly halfway through Bring Up the Bodies, with the scene at the end set later, obviously, the day of the king and Jane Seymour's wedding.

_The harvest is passed, the summer is ended, and we are not saved._ – Jeremiah 8:20

 

There was a time, between seasons, before the extravagant blossoming that takes over Wolf Hall and decks the halls in color reminded him that spring belongs to the young and those to whom God grants eternal vitality, when he thought about Jane Seymour more than is his due. What he had liked about her was her unobtrusive presence in the queen's chamber, where the other ladies-in-waiting had always been wanting something from him, audiences or honors or more titles, more castles they'd never live in. Jane Seymour kept quiet and, most importantly, seemed to listen – listen to Anne when she raged about the love she never had enough of, about her daughter who wouldn't be a son; listen to Henry when he sometimes rested his back against the cold wall of his wife's bedchamber and asked for a jug of water to wet his dry lips; listen to him, Cromwell, when he kept silent and let his eyes do the talking, poke and prod and unseat the secrets screwed into every set of lips. Then it seemed that Jane Seymour might be a fine conversationalist, given the chance to open her thin pale mouth. Once or twice she had brushed him with her soft white muslin sleeve, maybe unintentionally, maybe not.

At the time he had thought, holding her face clear in his mind's eye, a face in which, in fact, the pupils did not figure, because she kept her head down most of the time, whether weighed down by deference or to hide the sharpness of her sweet bird's eyes – _Henry will break her_.

*

He remembers most of all a visit at Wolf Hall at the beginning of the spring: Henry had already turned his affections towards her but was still too deep entrenched in the question of his annulment to truly pursue her, and he was riding to Wolf Hall, overnight so as to not let the king miss him, to assure that everything within its walls was fit for a prince. There is much to arrange before Henry sets foot in any place – not that he notices: his privilege, as royalty, is to be blissfully oblivious of all that is beneath his station, and that includes a spectrum of things that go from the price of bread to the origin of the sheets that cover his bed. But Cromwell is known at court as a man under whose station nothing is; who has refused false arms and substantial honors in favor of more tangible gifts and in order to retain his ability to do anything the king requires of him, no matter how much it may dirty his hands. He delegates: but unlike many a man he knows what to delegate and to whom, and which matters are too dear to the king's heart to be entrusted to even the most faithful of soldiers. No matter who God's delegate on Earth is these days, some things never change, and among those the fact that everyone can be bought for the right price, and that Thomas Cromwell cannot trust. It makes for a solitary life, but he resigned himself to that a long time ago, even before his wife and his two daughters were taken away by illness and – he still believes, some nights – misfortune.

As is his habit when he is not on official business, he has ridden alone. He does not need servants who will report his every move to Stephen Gardiner, or to Thomas Boleyn, or even to the queen. He knows better than most that nothing is easier than to be dragged down by a falling man, and those are all falling men; but he avoided this fate once, and he will again. Wolf Hall looks impregnable in darkness, which pleases him, though he knows the truth of it. Anne used to be impregnable, until she married Henry – and look at her now.

He dismounts his horse and hurries to the door. He didn't expect the entire Seymour family to be up, but they must know what this favor the king has placed on their silent, most unassuming daughter means for the fortunes of their family. He holds back a sigh. He had expected to steal a slice of bread and a bowl of soup from the kitchen and enjoy a night of reparative sleep, maybe even a visit from Cardinal Wolsey in his dreams to advise him on the best course of matters when choosing a new queen; he has ridden all day, and he is tired. But diplomacy waits for no-one.

"A good evening," he says courteously, counting them from under his eyelids: Old Sir John, whose lecherous reputation precedes him, all forgiven now that his mistress has been sent away to count her sins at St Agnes; his wife, the Lady Margaery, with her proud demeanor, her eyes patiently picking on every detail on his attire; Edward and Thomas, the brothers, and for all intents and purposes the masters of the house - they're the ones he is going to have to deal with, whose demands he'll have to mold and whose ambition it will be his duty to curb; Bess, the good sister, whom he once looked on with envy for the warm shelter of her arms; and finally Jane. Word on the street already is that Jane Seymour is nothing like La Anna, which alone is a reason for popular favor; what they do not say is that she is nothing like their beloved Katherine either. The new queen-to-be (though they shouldn't call her that; Henry's attention is nothing if not fleeting) is as fair as her predecessors were dark, and she holds her hands together on the front of her dress as though she were permanently counting the beads of a rosary; as much as he would like to be the man with the answers, he cannot tell what made her stand out in the eye of the king. At court they are saying that she is plain, and they are right: her skin is taut, with an almost yellow tinge, and it looks as though a blush would have trouble piercing through. Henry loves women who blush – did God not know that when he made this girl?

He quickly realizes that the family greeting is only a formality, and though the brothers attempt to draw him into a conversation about their sister's interest, Lady Margaery intercedes on his behalf. "You must be tired from the journey, Master Cromwell." From the corner of his eye he can see her hand at her daughter's back, and Bess takes a step in his direction. She is like an unmoored boat, easily movable and swiftly moved; her face is open and honest and the soft swell of her bosom is as warming to him as the fire in a familial hearth. He lets himself be steered towards the stairs, her fingers on his sleeve, hidden from her brothers' view.

"Bid you good night," he says finally, setting her adrift back into her mother's arms. The stairwell behind him breathes the familiar greetings of his personal ghosts, the Cardinal, Liz and his daughters Grace and Anne. They are waiting for him, like they are every night by the time he penetrates into the bedroom that has been laid out for him to rest his bones; theirs are made of thin air and dust, but he feels them when he embraces them, a soft relief through the phantom flesh, outlining bodies long gone but never let go of. Only the Cardinal does he not dare touch – instead he listens: after long days of talking his advice settles into the crevices of his aging body like silt, coating the shallow wounds he rarely has time or energy to stitch up himself.

*

Edward Seymour insists that he and Jane take a walk in the gardens, sans chaperon. At first he thinks of the distate if Edward were to learn that he, Cromwell, might have had designs of his own regarding his sweet sister's hand, but it doesn't take him long for him to realize that the Seymours, like any of the other families, are unsure of their equilibrium in the changing seat of monarchy and are ready to sell their daughters to the highest bidder. That is what daughters are for, the Duke of Norfolk once told him: for bartering with men and for bearing their children. Once they open their mouths they do nothing but wreak havoc. Two weeks from now he will be punishing his niece for failing to be quiet, and send her to the scaffold, and no matter how many of the mistakes made in her ascension to the throne were his he will blame them all on her, because he believes that women should have no power other than that of ordering their dresses – and even that: he has always refused to submit to the ostentatious French fashions Anne instituted at court, and stubbornly sticks with his old brocades and gold-seated family gems. Fortunately for him, Cromwell knows better; in such a world as they live in, he would not have survived long if he did not believe women are as capable of intelligence and deceit as men.

Jane's hand intertwines around his arm. Her long fingers curl at the crook of his elbow richly clad with discreet, dark velvet. For a while they walk in silence, her weight so insubstantial next to him that he cannot resist the urge to glance at her now and again to make sure that she hasn't been blown away by the wind, or that she has fled from him. He is a big man, and she is a little girl. He cannot imagine playing hide and seek in such a vast garden as this. All of a sudden he cannot see what in her made him think she would make a good wife for him – instead, superimposed on her body, the frail and defiant features of his daughter Grace. She would likely have grown up to be – not her, but a woman like her, graceful and swan-necked, hiding within herself vats of knowledge, her eyes sometimes sliding over to corral her prize.

"At court they say that I am the one asking the king to kill Anne Boleyn," she says quietly; and then, when she intercepts the question in his eyes: "Bess told me."

 _Well,_ he thinks when she does not volunteer any more, _are you?_ He prides himself on knowing everything, but Henry does not let him see her letters, and as much as he knows what goes on most of the time in his head he is often at a loss to determine what is passing through hers. When he inquires about her all he gets are shrugs and conflicting reports; the truth is that no-one knew her a year ago, and now that she is a major player they wish their spies could have foreseen the future. But only he can do that – or at least, that's what he thought.

"Aren't you going to ask me if it is true?" Jane asks. She does not say it with a smile like Anne would, a cat playing with its mouse, but with genuine curiosity.

"In my experience, there is no safer fortress than a woman who has decided to keep a secret, and I have no doubt that your behaviour befits that of a queen."

It is his intention to guilt her into telling him her plans, though he thinks that she is smart enough to avoid his traps; but once again she surprises him.

"So you really think the king intends to marry me?"

He thought she knew. It is the only thing they're talking about, back in London; that and the death of Anne Boleyn, the fall of one queen and the rise of another, as seems to be the cyclic tragedy of Henry's reign. But now that she says it he believes her surprise; he just does not believe that it is a sign of innocence. He has said it many times, to people who accused him of persecuting the guileless: show me an innocent man, and I will reconsider my opinions, I will change my ways. Until then, let me do my job.

"Do you not think so?"

"Is it a lawyer's trick, to answer questions with questions?"

He allows himself a smile. "One you seem to be mastering exceptionally well."

Without knowing it, he has struck the right chord: Jane does not trust letters from the king or his emissaries but she trusts a smile. She tells him that the king has sent her gifts but she won't accept them, because she has heard the horror stories of what old favorites of Henry become after he gets bored of them. He knows the truth, that it is not as bad as they say, but he cannot blame her for being prudent, and he tells her as much, forgetting for an instant that they are on opposite sides of the great wheel of personal advantage, that if she is to be Henry's wife she will replace Anne as his adversary, the unknown element between him and the king, tangling his wires, muddling his messages. But he cannot believe that a girl as slight and as sweet as her has Anne's wiles, and the future will prove him right: her powers are different. With all that he participates in writing it, history often escapes his grasp: though that morning he does not see the queen in Jane she is already building inside her ribcage, constricted by the tight laces of her outmoded corset, a queen of clay where Anne was made of copper and Katherine of marble. He almost starts when he realizes he is already thinking of Anne in the past tense, as though she were dead.

"What is it, Master Cromwell?" asks Jane, halting to lay a concerned hand on his arm. He nearly trembles under her child's touch.

He smiles at her; distracted. "Nothing. I am an old man." He does not admit that a lot, although it is starting to be true . But he remembered that he likes Jane, and besides she cannot tell anyone about his rheumatisms while she is still cooped up in her family's house, refusing enticements from the king. When Henry takes her to London for their marriage, if it ever happens, after Anne's death, then she will be too busy with new concerns, wedding dresses, fresh enemies, allies, few friends, and a number of other queenly things, to even think about him at all. Which is when he will move in: as is his habit.

He is so lost in his thoughts – thoughts of her, though not her as she is, frail and healthy and holding on to his arm, but another version of her, the queen she will make when he has wiped the blood off Anne's crown and shifted a few stones, called out for a jeweler to ever-so-slightly alter its design: another thing he specializes in –, he does not realize that she has set them in motion again. His question takes him by surprise. "What do you think of ghosts, Jane ?"

He doesn't call her, My Lady Seymour. She will be his lady soon enough – if anyone has an eye for the future it's him, endowed with the late Cardinal's predictive visions – but for now she is merely a girl who he used to think might walk down the stairs at Austin Friars with him, a girl upon whom the king has placed his flimsy favour. Jane inclines her head in his direction, as though she were bowing. She is full of a deference that does not keep him from seeing how sharp her eyes are, how observant her silence. Maybe he was wrong; maybe Henry won't kill her after all. But he killed La Ana, Anne Boleyn, the sweetest and cruelest of serpentine creatures, a woman who refused to grace his bed for nearly a year – he is having her tried and if her head doesn't roll then she'll be confined to a nunnery for the rest of her years, and for Anne that is as bad as death.

Jane's eyes are sweet, laced with a honeyed sadness. "I think they ought to stay in God's realm, Master Cromwell, instead of bothering those who are trying to live."

He looks down, which he never does with his enemies – touché. "Do you think all ghosts belong in God's realm, then?"

"If God doesn't forgive us for our sins, Master Cromwell, then who will?"

It is a dangerous opinion, one she certainly wouldn't want the king's bishops, who have the people paying a lot of money to ensure their absolutions, to hear. But she tells him without a trace of fear, perhaps because she knows that he only tells secrets when the telling benefits him – and what would he benefit from a little girl's confession that she believes herself forgiven in death? Perhaps, too, she sees in him a kindness that he possessed when his daughters were still alive, reserved now for Rafe, Richard, Gregory and his dogs – but he wouldn't bet on that.

"The queen might well die in the next few days," he says. "Does that mean you will have to stop resenting her?"

He can see she is shocked by his honesty, but she does not show any sign of fear. "It is God who forgives, Master Cromwell, not I."

If he were Eustache Chapuys in this instant, he would take out his little notebook and compose the first words of a letter to his employer. He would say, the girl Seymour is plain, but she is not without smarts, and there is a certain beauty in the way she holds herself, if one squints; and with the proper steering she might make a fine queen, certainly finer than Anne Boleyn ever was. But he is Thomas Cromwell, he sees what others do not see: he sees that there is in Jane Seymour something which he had not envisioned, the ability to remember, to bear a grudge, to carry out favors, a longevity of purpose which Anne never possessed, and the lack of which ended up hurting her. He sees the sharp relief of her profile over the apricot-colored sky, the needle-thin imprint of her lips, her nose, her austere bonnet – he thinks, _I would not like to have this girl as an enemy._

*

He has to return to London, but he cannot afford to let her go completely, neither for the king's sake nor his. He has been in the king's confidence for long enough to know of all of the letters he sends Jane, and to know that she rarely replies, though she sent him an embroidered handkerchief which the king says is very fine – an opinion which he, Cromwell, with his extensive knowledge of fabric and the ways to work it into something beautiful, can verify.

Despite what some may believe, he has used his time at Wolf Hall well. Not that he didn't enjoy Jane's company – he did, though not enough to alarm the king in any way –, but he is Thomas Cromwell, and he knows how to deploy his attention so that it extends over a place like a gigantic and elastic spider's web, an ability taken from those of his enemies who insist on treating him like an insect. They forget that he knows intimately the kind of obscurity that repels them, and besides that, he is an expert at finding a use for things people commonly understand as wicked. He has turned many a whore and kitchen wrench into an informant, to virtually no expense; this is the kind of expertise the king keeps him around for, though Henry prefers to believe it is for his vast legal knowledge and expert diplomacy. But if honeyed arguments were all he were good for, Eustache Chapuys would amply suffice. London and the court keep him busy, but he still sets time to read the reports his sources at Wolf Hall send him every day, and though those letters are mainly about Thomas and Edward's machinations, he uses them as an excuse to think about Jane.

He is not fourty anymore, and he loves his dead wife too well still to betray her memory with anyone, even in thought. No, what arrests him about Jane is that he cannot understand her, as hard as he tries. He is not deceived by the extremes of popular rumor, which paint her either as a cunning mistress to the king, urging him to get rid of Anne so he can remarry, or as a meek little lamb merely suffering the attentions of a powerful man. For all she looks like a ghost, she seems to him more human than anyone he has met in a long time, and that confuses him. Liz is the only woman he has ever seen as human, at least on this part of the world: he loved her for the way she sewed his daughter Grace's angel wings, for the way she gave birth to his children, crying and huffing and reddening from the waist up, her whole body contracted into an expression of her will, her legs up and her skirt rucked up around her waist, not with a whimper and a sigh like those court ladies for which giving birth seems like dying, who hang their heads and wait for it to be over, and turn their eyes away from their children when they are presented to them. He loved Liz for her sensible opinions and the way she never tried to pass them for something they weren't, or tried to make a book out of them; but most of all he loved Liz because she was so many things that he isn't, kind and fearless and uncomplicated, and now that she is gone he often feels like he might drift away and end up breaking faith with her memory, like he might wake up one day and discover that her ghost is no longer standing in the stairway, that it, too, has left slowly and silently through the front door, without slamming it, and has left him bereft of all love. That is why he loves Liz; that is why he is afraid.

Jane does not have Liz's vibrancy. She is sweet, but it is not the sweetness of sugar and honey: it is the sweetness of rose-bay, under which hides the secret sourness of possible poisoning. He cannot help but compare her to Anne, who made up in strength what she lacked in subtlety; who never hesitated to roll up her sleeves and do her own dirty work, because she trusted no one but herself to do things well. He admired that in her, but he also knows that the quality which put her on the throne is the same as the one which kept her from being crowned by the people: they do not like a woman who makes her own fate, who appears to be sweating under her gowns and whose affections are dealt in flesh, and from the beginning Anne was holding her cards wrong, because she had the right body to be a queen, tight and gracious and unforgiving, but the manipulating skill of a common whore. Maybe it's the French courtesan in her. But Jane, if she decides to play the game, will be an expert player: already he can see her dealing the hands, telling nothing, betraying nothing. He has made the mistake of making an enemy of a queen once, and he will not make it again.

He becomes aware that there are letters from Jane the king has not told him about, and he is worried. _I was wrong_ , he thinks, _she is not plain._ She is plain-looking, there is no doubt about that, but there is nobody who knows it more than she, and she uses it almost as expertly as Anne did her singular serpentine beauty, maybe more, because she knows to be understated about it instead of triumphant. Indeed, six months ago who would have suspected meek, unremarkable Jane Seymour of being able to capture the king's heart? Her sister was no queen, but she had all the trappings of a kingly meal, the abundant flesh and unresisting smile; Jane Seymour was nothing but a lady-in-waiting to Anne, still faithful to her dead queen. And yet – there she stands now, always in Henry's eyes, in his distracted smiles, even in his moving quill as he signs Anne's death warrants as though they were love letters to his new _dulcinée_.

He cannot ask the king about them; but he is Thomas Cromwell, and there is no situation he is unprepared for. He collects a few favors, issues a few threats, and three days later he is sending Jane her new queen's arms, should she be lucky enough to see the day of her matrimony. Instead of the peacock crest, a phoenix, wings extended over a castle – he almost smiles as he imagines Edward and Thomas's reactions, but really it is for her that he is writing, and he takes a singular pleasure in it. Those days most of his correspondence are a push and pull of words of favor and caution: he crafts them like original compositions, even though all the masters he has worked with have deplored his lack of talent for music; with the knowledge that one misplaced note can upset the balance of a whole bar, and that disharmony is a worse sin that adultery. He could tell Jane this very thing: her father might never be received at court but he is forgiven, whereas a wrong step on her part could lead her to the same scaffold Anne has left her head on. In those moments he almost wants her to be as intelligent as he fears, so that she can protect herself. Tell no-one: Master Cromwell, the Barbe Bleue of the English court, the king's executioner, is tired of death.

Her reply surprises him. Though he should expect that feeling by now, it is still an unexpected freshness, as though when he opened her unbroken seal (he is smart enough, and experienced enough, to see the twice-burnt wax on the edge of the red peacock; he will have to send a more trustworthy messenger next time) he freed a breath of countryside air, and could decrypt the whole of Wolf Hall within it: the dark-jointed walls, which are currently being scrubbed within an inch of their life to be fit if – when – the king decides to visit; the sprawling gardens, with its abundance of fruits leftover from the spring, apples, peaches and even apricots; and the surrounding wildness where the king had hunted and which is now, as a consequence, blessed, unless perhaps it is cursed instead because he, Cromwell, saw his daughters fly in the bellies of birds and devised all sorts of new omens – as though the English weren't superstitious enough already. She tells him that the motto he and the king have chosen for her - _bound to serve and obey_ ; he did not have the heavier hand in choosing it, though at the moment of sending the letter he had been satisfied, perhaps cruelly, that she would be cautioned against the risks of secrecy and intrigue – suits her, and that she will be thankful of anything that is done for her.

The king has learned his lesson with Anne: now he wants a wife who is 'everything she is not' (those are his words), like his dear Jane, with whom he can re-use verses and who does not object to kneeling. He can see in her letter than she understands the stakes of her elevation; but he also sees something which he did not expect, a certain weariness in the ebb and flow of her graceful sentences, so elegant they are almost invisible. It occurs to him that he never thought to ask her if she wants to be queen. He won't, not now, not never, the machine is too far engaged to stop, even if he wanted to; but he regrets not having done it. There are times when he forgets what it is to be something other than who he is.

He only sees in person her once before her wedding to the king, though from that moment on they keep a correspondence of a kind which he has not often experienced: not romantic, and not sentimental, but not business-like either; the kind of letters you send to a sister of a second-in-command, made up of sensible advice and almost anecdotal stories. He keeps her apprised of what is going on at court, and she tells him about her embroidery, her concerns about the princess Mary and what her brothers are demanding of her now that she is to be royalty. To her allies he says that he is helping her, and to her enemies that he is keeping an eye on her; but the truth is that he sometimes forgets himself and writes to her like he did his wife when she was still alive.

The day of her wedding he is in a corridor before she arrives, and he catches a glimpse of her silhouette, small and almost swallowed in her gaggle of future ladies-in-waiting, all of which he knows would disperse the rumor of his being there as soon as they saw him, although he is not here for her, only on business, to meet one of the king's jewelers. But Jane has eyes that see through the shadows, and though he does not know if he ought to be wary of that supernatural ability, for the moment he is grateful. He had meant to say a few words to her, before she is his queen.

She takes a few steps towards him, waiting for him to finish bridging the distance between them. This time he bows his head, a fraction. "My Lady Seymour."

"Master Cromwell. Did you wish to give me your blessing before I become Queen of England?" In any other woman's mouth it would sound presumptuous, but in hers it is a fact: there is a crown and she will pick it up before it can gather dust, perhaps not by any machination of her own, he cannot tell.

"You do not need my blessing," he tells her. "The king has bishops who are said to have the ear of God; I myself am often called a companion of the devil, though I would disappoint them if I told them the truth: that I am merely a man." She smiles at: _merely a man_. Her eyes seem to say: if you are merely a man, then I am merely a woman, and we both know that is not the case. In the changing light she almost looks like Anne, for a second: he thinks, maybe all women who are about to be married to the King of England look the same. But you cannot verify a theory with only two examples, and when Henry married Katherine he was still a soldier and a traveler; he will have to wait for Henry's fourth wife, just to be sure.

"I do not need it," Jane says, "but I shall like to have it."

"Then you do. God bless you in this happy day, my Lady Seymour. More than my blessing, though, which is worth nothing in today's currency, I will give you my advice, if you accept it." She says nothing; inclines her head, as if to say, _might as well_. "You told me that you think ghosts ought to stay in God's realm; but they do not, and I urge you be as careful with them as you are with the living. We are in a time where it is so easy to go from one to the other that one might not even notice the change." He smiles now, in jest; but she doesn't.

"Master Cromwell," she says, her voice gentle, "you are not the only one living with ghosts."

For the duration of an entire breath – inhale; exhale – she is suspended in the floating dust, and he can see that she is right: on each of her shoulders is the ghost of a dead queen, and he has enough experience with the dead to know that there are others hiding behind her back, scared to reveal themselves even in the transient reality of moments like those, hanging in the air and soon discarded. Then the breath ends, Jane Seymour is restored to her human condition, and so is he.

"Then I have no advice to give you."

She gives him a nod, a thank you for a blessing he has really imparted in the form of information about hunting and wool in his letters, when she had wanted to know what tangible things made up the country she was going to help govern. He sees her already half-turned away – the only possible position for such a question as she is still holding between her teeth. He is not surprised, for once; he had seen the flash of it tangled in the ivory, peeking out like a dog's tongue after a long walk. Maybe Jane becoming queen is the end of her surprises.

"Do you think I will be happy, Master Cromwell?" If he did not know better he would think she had not said it, and he had imagined it; but her voice is there, soft and anchored in the silence, and so is the vibrant outline of her question.

 _I think you should turn away, if you want happiness_ , he thinks about saying; but he doesn't. She cannot walk away; there is only one path for her, and she is already halfway down it. Who knows; maybe he is wrong, and she will manage something Anne hadn't. She has proved multiple times that she is capable of more than people, him included, believe.

"I think happiness is what you make of it, Lady Seymour," he tells her instead, a lie which costs him more than most do, which is still less than it would anyone else. She gives him her custom thin smile.

As she walks away he suddenly realizes why her resemblance to Anne was so striking: it is that she looked like her not in her wedding dress but as she awaited the fatal moment, not a week past; on her way to the scaffold with her proud gait and her eyes full of tears, ready to face the dishonor with which she ended her career as queen of England. It is that picture which Jane resembled, just a moment ago; it seems as fitting as it is ominous, the ghost of the dead queen following her successor as she makes her way down the aisle. He shakes his head, and it is enough to dislodge the thought; for now.


End file.
